


it seems so strange to me

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Gen, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Season/Series 02, WIP Amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23112193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Jemma and Skye get into some bad girl shenanigans in Stark Tower.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	it seems so strange to me

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't notice this is tagged WIP amnesty because it is **UNFINISHED**. It's been sitting in my drafts for literal years and I love it too much (especially given what aos and the mcu have become at this point compared to the post-Avengers, everyone lives in the tower days of fandom) to let it languish there forever. So this is your fair warning that this fic cuts off abruptly mid-scene and will never be finished properly.
> 
> Title from Brad Paisley's "he didn't have to be."

Jemma and Skye are in trouble. A great deal of trouble. Truly cosmic levels of trouble. And Jemma can’t even blame it on Skye’s bad girl shenanigans because it was all  _her_ idea.

“Who are you?” the Black Widow asks.  _The_ Black Widow. Natasha Romanoff herself. 

“Um,” Skye says.

“Well,” Jemma says.

They don’t really have a cover story for if they get caught. Skye’s hacking was supposed to prevent just that and Jemma’s terrible at lying so neither of them really thought of it. Perhaps they should have included May in this plan.

“May!” Jemma fairly shouts, earning her the attention of every single Avenger in the room. Which is, in fact, every single Avenger. She cringes a little deeper into the plush couch. “I mean,  _Melinda_ May. We know her. She’ll vouch for us.”

“You know the  _Cavalry_ ?” Clint Barton—yes,  _that_ Clint Barton—asks.

“Don’t call her that,” Jemma and Skye say at once. They’ve been having to say it ever since the team became the heart of SHIELD and new people kept coming in and looking at May like she’s some mythical warrior.

“Will she?” Romanoff asks, ignoring Barton’s aside and in a tone of voice that promises if May  _doesn’t_ vouch for them there will be consequences. Very unpleasant consequences.

“Absolutely,” Skye says, nodding her head emphatically.

“She really will,” Jemma adds, hoping May won’t decide to turn this into a teaching exercise.

“But what  _I_ wanna know,” Stark says, slumping onto the couch opposite Jemma and Skye while Romanoff wanders off to make the call, “is how you got past JARVIS. That was some impressive work.”

Skye bounces forward to sit on the very edge of her cushion. “Seriously? You think so?”

“Oh yeah,” Stark says and the two of them begin talking about things Jemma understands but doesn’t really care for. This sort of thing was always more Fitz’s area and anyway and her brain is still going a mile a minute from the results of their mission.

Yes, they were caught infiltrating Stark Tower. Yes, she had to deploy the mini-grenades to wipe out the computer system in one of the labs, likely resulting in thousands, if not millions of dollars in damages which neither she nor SHIELD, in its current state, can repay. Yes, they are now being held  _by the Avengers_ . But the mission was still, in many ways, a success. Jemma got the answers she was looking for.

Now if only she knew how to feel about that.

She lets her eyes drift over the assembled heroes. Just weeks ago, were she in this situation, she would have been eager to follow Skye’s lead and talk science with Bruce Banner. Or she might have even taken some time to sigh over Thor’s arms. But now…

Now she can’t quite keep her gaze from drifting over to the pillar Steve Rogers is leaning against. He’s not imposing or overbearing as one might think a man labeled Captain America would be. He’s quiet and reserved, watching her and Skye and the goings-on with a critical eye that is, she is sorry to say, altogether too familiar.

She almost wishes she hadn’t gone back into Vault B.

_ There’s work to be done. There’s  _ always _ work to be done these days. But the boys have time for video game marathons and everyone knows Coulson and May’s “highly classified mission” last Saturday was just a date night, so Jemma doesn’t feel  too bad about leaving off the paper work on the latest round of agent physicals until tomorrow.  _

_What she feels bad about is stealing the key to Vault B from Coulson’s office under the guise of insisting he come down to the labs for his own examination._

_ It’s not like she’s going to do anything  _ wrong _. She’s only going to spend a few of her precious hours of downtime getting as close to greatness as she can. She knows for a fact—or at least she heard rumors to the effect—that Coulson called in over a dozen favors to be assigned to the detail monitoring Steve Rogers’ defrosting. Well, Jemma’s not going to watch Peggy Carter sleep, she just wants to spend a little while being absurdly excited over holding things Peggy Carter held more than half a century ago. _

_She’s really not sure if that is more or less creepy, but she’s going to do it anyway._

_She opens drawers and peeks through old files that mean nothing to her, growing familiar along the way with the precise, elegant handwriting of SHIELD’s founder. It actually reminds her of her childhood for some reason. Probably she’s remembering her teachers’ notes on her earliest assignments and the way their handwriting seemed impossibly beautiful beside her youthful chicken scratch._

_She wiles away hours reading hurriedly scrawled notes and messages in borders and laughing at her own silliness. If Peggy Carter could see her now, she thinks, she’d probably tell her to get back to work. The thought isn’t enough to stop her though and she finds herself sitting on the floor beside one of the bookshelves, tugging a frail old file box from inside._

_It’s late by now and she’s tired, but this box was so lonely for so long, trapped back there as it was, that it feels wrong to leave after she’s already pulled it out. She flips through the files a little less enthusiastically than before, not so enchanted with history as she was earlier in the evening, and sets them aside._

_At the bottom of the box is a leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed with time like all the other papers she’s seen today. The lock is good enough quality that it’s still holding but the leather isn’t. The flap lifts right off, lock still firmly clasped, and Jemma hesitates only a moment before opening the cover._

_That same handwriting fills the page and many, many after. Line upon line of complete nonsense strung together with such precision that Jemma knows instantly it must be a code of some sort._

_She sighs, wishing she had proficiency with this sort of thing. She took the required Academy course on basic code breaking, but didn’t pursue the subject any further and regrets it now. One of the others might be able to figure it out, but for some reason Jemma wants to keep this discovery to herself, at least until she knows what it says._

_ As she turns page after page, she resigns herself to the thought that written here might be secrets unfit for consumption even so many decades later. Surely Director Carter wouldn’t have written  _ this much _ in code if she wanted just anyone reading it. _

_The code gives way to blank pages and she flips sadly to the end. As the last page turns, an old black and white photograph slips into her lap. It’s a picture of a newborn, so small and perfect and similar in that way very young babies are. One of Director Carter’s children, probably, kept close to her while she worked to remind her why she did what she did._

_ Jemma smiles fondly at the photo as she tucks it back in its place. Her eyes fall to the final page, opposite the photograph, and something inside her twists uncomfortably, like when she encounters a problem that needs solving quickly, but that she can’t figure out. In the center of the page are five words. Not nonsense, but simple, sensible words. Words Jemma  _ knows .

The Raven and the Robin _ was a book of poetry and stories for children published in England in 1925. It never achieved any degree of notoriety and by the time the war ended, both copies of the book and people who remembered it were hard to find. _

_Maybe Peggy Carter was one of those. Maybe she was sentimental about it and wanted to find a copy for her baby. Maybe someone recommended it to her and she scribbled the title in her journal._

_ There are numerous completely logical reasons this particular book title might be in Peggy Carter’s journal. It might not even  be a book title. It might be a code phrase of some sort. _

_ All of these things, Jemma tells herself as she carries the journal to her quarters. There’s a small bookshelf there, in which Jemma keeps the few personal effects that she couldn’t leave behind when she went into the field and which were lucky enough to survive the Bus. Among them is her own copy of  _ The Raven and the Robin . _ It belonged to Jemma’s mother before her and both of them cherished it as children. _

_She flips through the pages, past gritty black and white illustrations and dense blocks of text that no modern child would tolerate. Two-thirds of the way through the book is the fifth of eight insert pages sporting more artfully done drawings. The other seven pages are one-sided but on the back of this one is a block of text. Text which matches precisely Peggy Carter’s handwriting._

_“So what you’re saying,” Skye says slowly, looking between the book, the journal, and the several dozen pages of translation Jemma’s already finished using the key in her copy of the book, “is you think you’re Captain America’s granddaughter.”_

_It sounds slightly ridiculous when she puts it like that but- “Yes.”_

_“Okay,” Skye says slowly, drawing out the word. “Are you sure you’re not just having_ super _wishful thinking? I mean, I know I used to dream about my parents being these super cool people…”_

 _“I already_ have _grandparents. But when my grandmother fell ill-” Jemma sighs. “She needed a bone marrow transplant and when neither my mother nor I matched, well, she finally blabbed. Said they weren’t my mother’s real parents, they’d only pretended she was theirs because it was simpler. Her story sounds an awful lot like _this _story.” Jemma taps her own pages of translation._

_Skye frowns down at the pages, reading Director Carter’s account—potentially—of a story Jemma’s been hearing for years. The story of a young woman, pregnant with the child of a dead soldier, asking another soldier to take the child as his own. Jemma’s grandfather had never talked about the injuries he suffered during the war, but they apparently rendered him incapable of having children and this was a chance he couldn’t pass up. Carter says she made the couple swear they’d never tell the child or anyone else about the adoption, and that she left only the old copy of a children’s book with the cipher code hidden inside for her daughter. Just in case._

_“She really loved her,” Skye says softly. “Wanted her to be safe from people who might hurt her.”_

_“Apparently she wasn’t the only SHIELD agent who felt that way,” Jemma says tentatively._

_Skye smiles in response—which is something of a relief to Jemma (Skye’s past is a touchy subject these days)—and goes back to looking at the documents._

_“It’s not proof,” Skye says. “Even with the book and the story. I’m sure there were lots of couples who adopted kids that way after the war and if this book was as unpopular as you say, it could totally have been given away without anyone realizing.”_

_Jemma nods. She’s been up all night thinking about this. From what little she’s read of Carter’s journal, she doubts she’ll find further proof there. The woman was careful to keep names out of it, even referring to Steve Rogers as simply “the Captain.” What Jemma’s thinking now is probably the result of lack of sleep, but she says it anyway because if anyone will understand having to know where you came from, Skye will._

_“The only way to be sure,” Jemma says delicately, “is to do a paternity test.”_

_ Slowly, very,  _ very _ slowly, Skye lifts her head to look Jemma in the eye. “On Captain America?” _

_“Yes.”_

_Skye leans back in her chair, considering Jemma carefully. After several minutes pass, she finally says, “Okay.”_

From there it was frightfully easy to come up with the plan. Skye hacked their way into Stark Tower, then overrode security (and had a little fun fighting some of the  human element off herself), leaving Jemma to grab the blood sample from Stark’s vault and run tests in the labs. They probably could’ve been out safely if not for that last part, but Stark Tower’s labs were  _right there_ and with better processing power than any other in the city. It just made sense to use them.

“But why did you have to  _blow up my lab_ ?” Stark asks suddenly, turning a glare in Jemma’s direction.

“Oh,” she says, forcing her eyes away from Rogers, “well, I had just- um-” She twists her hands in her lap, wishing she’d come up with a lie beforehand. How is it she managed to successfully lie to an agent of HYDRA— _to his face_ —but she can’t lie to people who won’t kill her even if she did have nefarious purposes in coming here.

“May has a question,” Romanoff says, coming back into the room and sounding very put out, “but she won’t say what it is. She wants to know yes or no.”

“ _How does she know?_ ” Jemma demands, slapping Skye’s arm.

“I didn’t tell her!” Skye yells, putting a protective hand over her arm as she pulls away.

“No,” Romanoff says patiently, “someone named Fitz apparently did, he’s on the line too.”

“Fitz!” Jemma yells.

“He’s just mad we wouldn’t let him come on our girls only mission,” Skye pouts.

“ _What is the question?_ ” Romanoff asks. Everyone in the room seemed to be absorbed in the conversation before, but now things go painfully quiet.

Jemma dares another glance at Rogers. Oh, this day cannot get worse.

“I know!” Skye says. “I mean, of course I know what the question is, and this isn’t it, but it also answers that question.”

Romanoff’s eyes narrow in that way May’s do when she’s getting fed up with their antics. Several of the other Avengers just seem to be enjoying the show.

Skye unzips her jacket and pulls out two envelopes. On one is written YES and on the other NO. Barton and Rogers both move forward, fearing a threat, but Stark waves them off as Skye turns to face Jemma.

“You got a look at the results before you blew the computers, right?”

Jemma nods.

“Okay,” Skye says, bracing herself, “so my question for you is this: do we still think Captain America is hot?”

Stark sputters into his drink. Romanoff actually smiles, just a little. Rogers is going pink.

“Skye,” Jemma says, trying to keep her voice level, “even if- you don’t have to-”

“ _Do we still_ think Captain America is hot?” Skye says again.

Jemma sighs heavily. “No. I’m afraid not.”

“Dang,” Skye says, dropping all dramatic pretense. She sags back against the couch cushions and hits Jemma in the chest with the NO envelope. “The YES one was really good, too. Now we’ll have to burn it.”

Stark reaches deftly across the coffee table to pull the card from Skye’s hands with a soft, “Yoink!”

“Hey! Burned! That definitely has to be burned, I said!”

Jemma tears open the NO envelope, revealing a simple greeting card. It’s red with big block lettering on the front that reads, “Congratulations on your genes!” Inside Skye’s drawn a doodle of Captain America trying and failing to do something with beakers.

There are actual tears building in Jemma’s eyes. Which is absurd. But she still moves to hug Skye.

“ _Oh my God!_ ” Stark cries. “My eyes! My eyes!”

There’s an instant flurry of activity. Guns are drawn, arrows are notched, an ancient, mystical hammer is summoned, and Bruce Banner runs to Stark’s aid, only to immediately grab the card from his hands.

“Oh shut up,” he mutters.

His calm seems to put the others at some ease, but the number of weapons still aimed in Jemma and Skye’s general direction is rather discomfiting.

“What is it?” Rogers asks.

“No!” Skye yells before he can make it two steps in Banner’s direction. All eyes immediately divert to her. “Uh, I mean. Maybe you shouldn’t look at that.”

“What is it?” he asks again, a note of warning in his voice.

“It’s, um, it’s a picture of you. A drawing I found on the internet. One without your fancy suit. That cuts off just above Old Glory.”

“ _Skye_ ,” Jemma cries.

“It was a joke! To celebrate!”

“I don’t understand,” Thor says, “what could you have discovered in your thievery that has caused you to no longer consider Captain America attractive?”

“We weren’t stealing anything!”

“We were just borrowing it,” Jemma adds.

“And blowing my my lab,” Stark grouses, though he’s still feigning blindness.

“Borrowing  _what_ ?” Rogers asks.

Jemma would very much like to burrow to the center of the earth now. “A sample of your blood.”

Rogers turns on Stark. “And where did they get  _that?_ ”

Stark waves the hand not currently covering his eyes dismissively. “I have samples of all our DNA.”

“ _Why?_ ” Romanoff asks.

“So if I ever suspect anyone of being an alien imposter, I can test their DNA against the sample to be sure.”

“Don’t you think there might be a slightly less difficult way to test that?” Banner asks.

One of Stark’s eyebrows rises over his hand as he considers. “No.” Almost before he finishes the single syllable, he’s surging forward in his seat. “ _Wait a minute-_ ”

Barton’s come around behind the couch and he’s got Jemma by the wrist. He holds her arm aloft, displaying the bandage at the inside of her elbow. Apparently he figured it out before Stark did.

“Just what sort of test were you running?” he asks. He’s actually smiling a little bit, like he might already know the answer.

Jemma turns towards Rogers, knowing that when she says this, she has to say it to him.

“A paternity test,” she says quietly.

The room, once again, goes eerily silent.

“Melinda?” Romanoff says into her phone. “I’m gonna have to call you back.”

“Wouldn’t that be a grand-paternity test?” Skye asks.

Rogers sits down heavily, missing the arm of the couch nearest him and sliding off onto the floor. “What?” he asks a little shakily.

“Okay,” Romanoff says loudly. “Melinda has asked us to ‘babysit the girls’—her words, while she forms a team to break into HYDRA to get back-”

“My blood sample!” Jemma cries, her hand flying to her mouth in horror. “ _Oh_ , I forgot. They require it of all employees. If they find out I’m Captain America’s granddaughter it could be catastrophic.”

“She’s also left instructions,” Romanoff continues as if Jemma never interrupted, “for the two of you. No mentioning Tahiti.”

Jemma and Skye both laugh uncomfortably. There is no way either of them want to be the one to tell the Avengers about  _that_ .

“And if you want to stop freaking out about him-” she gestures to Rogers- “for a little while, you can ask Barton to tell you how much he hates Lance Hunter.”


End file.
